Today is February 17, three days after Valentine's. This marks the first time I'm reflecting and publishing since the early days of Multiply.
Back then, it was a younger me exploring the internet - being into computers, gaming, and anime. I was deeply engrossed in the web and happy just to explore. I'd like to mark 2026 as a year for new beginnings, and this milestone post reminds me of that younger version of myself! After going through some big life changes, I've found myself in a position where I could explore and try new things. And nothing is newer than creating in the age of AI.
> Let Me Introduce Myself First
I'm Meio, 32, married with five adult cats. I live in the Philippines and I'm a (returning/reformed?) Catholic. I love trying new things. I think talk is cheap so I pretend that I can do something and then I do it. I've felt frustration from people when I get excited about doing things. I usually keep to myself but lately I've been trying to work publicly - be more seen. This would've irked an earlier version of myself that liked to just excel without any drama.
Computers and technology excite me. I play a lot of video games in my spare time. I think it's the feeling of control and "creation at the tip of my fingertips" that gets me excited. I also like the feeling of exploring curiosity and seeing something cool happen.
After getting married, I've recently learned that being present and socializing feels great. Listening to people excites me. Helping people makes me feel even better. So here I am journaling what I've been working on publicly. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. I don't know. But I've got this itch to try.
> Where My Head's At Lately
My day job, as it always has been, is a Full Stack Developer. In simplest terms - I take your idea and shape it into fully usable software. I've always been anxious about whether the work I'm doing lands properly. I worry about letting people down - and sometimes I have, and sometimes that worry was just the anxiety talking. But I've made a lot of people happy too.
I've recently started a new job which afforded me the technical know-how to have enough dopamine to build outside of work hours and the freedom to do so. I feel extremely blessed to have such an opportunity.
The past few weeks have been a rollercoaster and it's just started to wind down. I use a lot of Generative AI to work and with the technology in its frontier days (as in akin to the western frontier when the USA was being established) - the biggest thing I've noticed with it is my overuse and underuse of it - and the difficulty to find a balance.
> Underdoing AI
There is a lot of discourse surrounding the use of AI at work nowadays. The worst I've seen is called "cheating" or "taking other people's jobs." My first reaction to ChatGPT and Midjourney in 2024 was wonder and joy. So quite honestly, I didn't understand and didn't feel good about discovering the pro/anti-AI sentiment (there's even a subreddit /r/aiwars which documents the vitriol between the two).
I started hearing the same sentiments in colleagues, friends, and family. It's become a political issue. I wasn't detached from how the amazing tool I'd discovered was hurting people, pitting them against each other, and threatening their livelihoods.
It felt like whenever I enjoyed using the tool, I had been hurting them. So I kept the excitement to myself.
On the technical side, here's what my actual AI usage looked like back then: I was introduced to Cursor working for a startup in 2025. We had to move fast to make it to market - so AI use was encouraged (and looking back, inevitable to stay competitive). I was introduced to the Autocomplete, Agent, and Ask tools on GPT 4.1. My strategy to write code was simple then - I was comfortable with TypeScript development at that point, and I could create object-based backend objects that were pleasant to read. I knew what I wanted to see out of the generations back then and I steered it into the outputs I wanted. I manually coded. I never asked to write full classes or do comprehensive refactors.
I took its suggestions with a grain of salt and used it to make my solutions more elegant. Then I was told that I was overengineering my work and I needed to communicate the drafts I was making. Looking back, I was using Cursor the way I coded manually - refactoring endlessly, chasing clean code perfection, treating every output like it had to survive a code review from Robert C. Martin himself. It took forever. But it was also the bridge between the old way I worked and where I'm headed - from meticulous abstraction to a faster, more iterative approach. I just didn't know that yet.
> Overdoing It
Working nowadays is great. I've been using Claude to teach me a 3D game development pipeline with Godot and Blender on the side. I'm proud and happy to share that.
Last week I ran two spikes to generate prototypes at the same time by doing the following: "Using plan mode on Claude Code with Linear MCP, pull in each of the two ticket descriptions to talk through creating a markdown of a plan for each," then in parallel, run two instances of Cursor agent mode with git worktrees to implement the plan.
A few weeks ago I'd been hearing more and more reports that use of generative AI in work intensified it and had been causing burnout.
I was proud of the feat because people have just started working parallel tickets and I felt like I was at the cutting edge. I felt like hackerman. But at the same time I found myself having a hard time turning off after work. I had been losing sleep. I'm writing about the experience now having wound down from it.
And the kicker? I wasn't forced to do this. I wanted to try it. And I wanted to, maybe in a way, compensate for "underdoing AI." Maybe in some way I was just saying "ok well we're not in the stone age anymore."
I'm sitting here now asking myself - what's the balance between overdoing it and underdoing it?
I think it starts with stepping away from the screen, doing something that's just for me, and coming back with a clearer head. Start with the problem. Clear your head. Then bring the right tool for the job. That's the best I've got right now, and I think that's enough.
When I manually coded, overengineering my work came out of the fact that I HATED getting vague or negative reviews in PRs so I just made sure my work was comment-proof. I gave the same kinds of comments. I nitpicked and pointed out "mistakes" that turned out to be just personal preference. If it wasn't perfect it wasn't coming out of the kitchen.
Maybe now because I didn't write the code anymore I was free from that.
> Wrapping Up
My next posts will be documenting my next development journey. There's a different kick I've noticed out of creating for myself - I don't know, it's really mentally freeing. I started this so maybe I could share my process and at the same time keep myself accountable. So stay tuned! Let's navigate the age of AI together.